Boca Raton Cemetery Manager Ed Libengood gestures at available space for more graves.
Sallie James/The Coastal Star
By Sallie James
With more than 8,000 graves, crowding had become a critical issue at the picturesque Boca Raton Cemetery.
The problem was solved in September with an easy fix: City Council members voted to abandon the existing 8-foot-wide pathways that run across the graveyard, at 451 SW Fourth Ave.
The decision couldn’t have come at a better time.
Boca Raton Cemetery Manager Ed Libengood said there are at least 30 residents on a waiting list to purchase multiple gravesites as soon as they become available.
“Some are looking to buy two graves, some are looking to buy as many as 12 graves,” Libengood said. “We’re out of room we had developed for grave stations. We had additional vacant land on the east side of Fourth Avenue, but it’s easier to abandon the pathways [on the west side of Fourth Avenue] because all the roadways are in and the grass is in.”
Boca Raton Cemetery is situated on the east and west sides of Southwest Fourth Avenue, with approximately 15 developed acres on the west side of the road and 4.5 undeveloped acres on the east side. An additional 5 acres comprise the mausoleum complex on the west side of Fourth Avenue.
Converting the unused grassy pathways in the cemetery’s western section involved little more than surveying the property and mapping out the plots, Libengood said.
The original gravesites were designed as oversized lots with 8-foot pathways in between, so there is plenty of space for additional burial sites, he said.
The decision will make room for an additional 1,172 gravesites, according to the survey, although the actual total will be somewhat less because of several trees. The plan will generate approximately $3,762,120 more in revenue from the sale of the plots and associated costs such as perpetual care, according to a city memo.
The grassy pathways have not been used for more than 20 years and the asphalt that originally defined them was removed years ago because of deterioration, according to the city. The sprawling cemetery south of Palmetto Park Road is rich in history and includes a gentle hill that is among the highest points in Boca Raton.
Its current location is not its original spot; the cemetery has been moved three times.
Its first location in 1916 included only 25 graves and was on the beach near the Boca Raton Hotel and Club, according to an index of burials from 1916 to 2007 compiled by the Palm Beach County Genealogical Society. The site was selected because other areas were considered too valuable as farmland.
“They chose a piece of the least valuable land,” Libengood said. “Then they eventually moved the cemetery in 1927 to Second Avenue and Glades Road. It was completed in 1928. There were 41 more burials until 1943, when the cemetery was moved to its current location.”
Sixty-six bodies were transferred when the cemetery was moved for the third and final time, he said.
“The Army Air Corps needed the land at the time,” he said. “[The cemetery] was noisy having funerals and they had their barracks and training. The graves were exhumed at that time and moved here.”
The current location is the final resting place for many of the city’s original settlers, including several former elected officials such as George Long, Boca Raton’s first mayor, and Alex Hughes, the African-American pioneer, among others.
“Col. Arnold MacSpadden was head of the Army Air Corps when it was here. It was a huge Army airbase during World War II,” said Mary Csar, executive director of the Boca Raton Historical Society and Museum. “He came back here and retired when he got out of the Army, and he and his wife are buried here.”
Another notable grave is that of Frank Chesebro, who died in 1936. He was one of the city’s largest landowners and farmers, Csar noted.
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